Year in Review: Building Ideas
Ideas Rule the World — Sam Adeyemi
I went into 2024 thinking that I needed to do more to maximize my time and efforts, and find new growth opportunities. I had some vague goals, but had not settled on anything concrete yet.
I had to determine what I wanted to do and then plan the “how.” After some deliberation, I decided there were two things I could do in my spare time. I’ve always wanted to start a YouTube channel to share my thoughts and ideas in a visual form.
I also wanted to build and ship one of my personal projects to the world. I’ve always wanted to do this, but between learning on the job and, well, doing the job, I’ve not had much time over the years. Now, I had two things to work with, and had to come up with an execution plan.
YouTube
I play video games in my free time, so I was tempted to create a gaming channel (maybe I will still do so later). However, the setup for this seemed more complex. I eventually settled on making videos about things I learned about programming, developer productivity/hacks and the startup ecosystem in Africa.
Shooting videos is a different animal. I didn’t want to do a high-tech production setup, so I only got a ring light and, later, a microphone. I used my phone to record videos. I picked a spot in my house, and @slightlynerd1 was born. The first couple of videos were rough; it took me a while to get used to talking into a camera and maintaining eye contact. But could manage it to some extent after a couple of videos.
Twenty videos later, I can’t say I’m comfortable doing it. I get slightly anxious whenever I want to shoot a new video, but I push through. I will keep pushing through it in 2025.
Startup Graveyard Africa
I’ve always wanted to build products. My main motivation for getting into programming was to make video games. While I’ve not attempted this, I’ve built other things. When I built Startup Graveyard in December 2023, I thought it would be a weekend project. But as time passed, I saw the potential for it to be something more.
First, I decided to gather as much data as possible on African startups that had shut down. Since the first version that I built over the weekend was just a single page, I decided to add a blog section to the website that would be used to cover case studies of analysis of these startups and general helpful articles on building a successful startup.
It’s been a year of learning, building and telling stories of these startups and personally, it’s been an educating and enlightening experience. We just dropped our 2024 startup report so do check it out.
IOG Summit
I was invited to be part of a panel session at the International Opportunities and Growth (IOG) Summit in December. We discussed about the various opportunities of working globally through tech and how to get started. It was also great to hear from other speakers throughout the event on different avenues of tapping into the global market. A truly insightful event and I’m glad I was a part of it.
These were the main highlights of my year. I mainly kept my head down and just built ideas that I believed in, strengthened relationships with friends and family. I started the year hoping to do more and I definitely did more. Cheers to more success in 2025 🥂
